Maspalomas review: Basque tear-jerker in search of cruisey gay paradise in Gran Canaria

Is Maspalomas, a beach resort town on Gran Canaria’s south coast in Spain, the gay man’s Magaluf? The town of 36,000 people is home to 30 gay bars – roughly one for every 1,000 residents – and hosts three Pride parades per year. (That is, one summer, one winter, one fetish). It is sunny, trashy and horny, a heady cocktail that newly-single, 76-year-old hedonist Vicente (José Ramón Soroiz) guzzles with a crater-faced British teen’s gusto. He has, after all, 50 years in the closet to catch up on and, as such, eruditely divvies his time between nude beaches, darkrooms and an app called ‘Kinkr’.

A stroke mid-sauna threesome halts Vicente’s scheduling and sends him to a nursing home in San Sebastián, where his daughter, Nerea (Nagore Aranburu) – estranged since his coming out tore the family fabric – occasionally, if begrudgingly, visits. Suddenly surrounded by octogenarians who pass their days bemoaning “feminazis” and room-sharing with the macho conservative Xanti (Kandido Aranga), Vicente slinks back into the closet and lets his old life vanish.

This is a film that plays a cinematic sleight of hand, setting itself up as a rowdy cruising romp before dénouing into a tear-jerking family drama. Covid sweeps into the nursing home and begins to reap through residents. Father and daughter slowly disperse the fug that 50 years of dishonesty had spread. Eventually, Vicente shares his sexuality with the head of the home, who warmly thanks him. (“I’m homosexual,” he hiccups, “that’s the first time I’ve said that.”)

The pacing of the film – very much split into pre- and post-stroke parts – goes from libidinal and breakneck to slow and deliberate, a transition that directors Jose Mari Goenaga and Aitor Arregi execute well. Close shots and sweeping scores enhance the atmosphere, while Soroiz’s calm, ruminative and award-winning lead performance (he bagged Best Lead at the Goya Awards, Spain’s BAFTAs equivalent) both made the 75-year-old actor a star in Spain and give the film a necessary soul.

The subject, meanwhile, is singular. While more films seem to be grappling with that transition into life’s twilight – 2020’s The Father, starring Anthony Hopkins, twinkling as the lodestar – how queer people must navigate that darkness is a fertile but largely neglected theme. Goenaga and Arregi do it with respect and empathy, and a dash of smut on top. But that’s what life is really about, at the end of the day. Respect, empathy, love and smut.

Maspalomas is playing as part of the BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival, running from 18–29 March 2026.